Paul Daugherty hopes Whit Babcock’s (background) legacy will be getting the Bearcats out of the America 12. / The Enquirer/Joseph Fuqua II

Written by

The Catholic 7 have left the congregation previously known as the Big East, to form a new Big East that likely will include Xavier. The University of Cincinnati will leave the Big East to join a new conference, momentarily called America 12 – what? -- that no one here even wants to visit.

The new Big East will play its conference tournament at Madison Square Garden. The America 12 will play its conference tournament in a rodeo hall in Wichita Falls, TX, but only if the Monster Trucks aren’t in town.

I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me, and I’m sure for you as well. Nothing says big-time college basketball like Central Florida at Fifth Third Arena on a Tuesday. What’s the pitch to a stud recruit now? “You come here and you’ll be playing Tulane and Houston every year!”

Everyone’s hope is that America 12 – kinda rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? -- is the conference version of a Winnebago, and that this marriage of desperate convenience will split like atoms in a reactor, sooner than later. Meantime. . .

Get ‘em outta there, Whit Babcock and Santa Ono.

Knee-walk to the offices of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Send fabulous parting gifts to Georgia Tech and Florida State, to entice them to leave for the Big 12 and/or Big 10. If Bob Goin’s legacy was getting UC into the Big East, Babcock’s will be getting the Bearcats out. More specifically, out of the wreckage that is/was the Big East. All that’s at stake is the health of the athletic department.

Once you have lived among the giants, you cannot return to Lilliput. It’s not good for the bottom line, or the indigestion.

And really: America 12?

It sounds like the name of a large yacht. “Captained by Motorboat Jones, the sailing ship America 12 took back the America’s Cup from Australia Saturday. . .”

Like a dozen guys arrested for shoplifting in Tehran: “A group of US citizens jailed last month for stealing hookahs from an Iranian bazaar have been convicted in a Tehran court, the Enquirer has learned. The so-called America 12 will have their hands cut off on Thursday. . .”

Like the number of fans attending UC-UCF on a Tuesday, adjusted for scorekeepers, radio announcers and kids who mop the floor. . .

Like a new ride for Danica Patrick. Like a new salad at McDonald’s, featuring soy, ginseng, poi, Pabst Blue Ribbon and eight kinds of Spam.

Like. . . well, you get the idea.

Get ‘em outta there, Whit.

While we’re on the subject: Shouldn’t any new conference eliminate any number associated with its name? I wasn’t a math major, but I do know that 10 isn’t 12, and right now, 10 is how many schools will play basketball in America 12. The way conferences add and subtract members, numbers matter as much as loyalty and truth.

The local power shift is breathtaking. Overnight, Xavier is Central Park, and UC is the playfields at Lunken. Media, local and national, will wear out a path to Cintas Center.

Xavier has planned quietly for years, for something exactly like this. You didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see that the more football tossed its weight around the Big East, the less likely the league’s center was going to hold. Xavier scheduled, traveled and won like a Big East team. Its other programs were watered sufficiently, so any jump would not be overwhelming.

When the time came, the Musketeers were a logical fit for the Big Priest, er, East.

Their recruiting will surge, if only because schools won’t be able to tell prospects that X plays in a “mid-major’’ league. The prestige in belonging to a league of respected academic schools – the same prestige UC enjoyed – will be on Victory Parkway as well.

What will happen when UC fans start hearing that their basketball team “doesn’t play anybody’’? How psyche-scarring might it be for UC Fan to hear XU Guy discuss the possibility of dropping the Bearcats from the schedule? ‘We don’t need you,’’ XU Guy might say.